


Coffee, Tea, or Anthropomorphic Manifestation?

by TriffidsandCuckoos



Category: Matthew Swift Series - Kate Griffin
Genre: Christmas, Gen, Post Stray Souls, Women Being Awesome, Yuletide 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:42:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriffidsandCuckoos/pseuds/TriffidsandCuckoos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sharon, Penny and Kelly meet up for lunch. It's basically Matthew Swift's worst nightmare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coffee, Tea, or Anthropomorphic Manifestation?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/gifts).



> I really cannot title.
> 
> I hope there are sufficient awesome ladies and outsider POVs on Matthew Swift to satisfy!

Sharon eyes the blackboard’s chalked and cheery menu and confesses, “Coffee makes me twitch a bit.”

Penny turns enough to roll her eyes and point out, “It has that effect on lots of people.”

“I was a barista.”

“So focus on the ‘was’.”

“I still don’t get why we had to meet here.”

“Too early for the pub – at least, not what I call a proper trip to the pub. Besides, find me a pub lunch in the City which I can afford…”

Sharon nods knowingly. If this did become a regular thing, the way it was looking to be, she’s going to have to coax the third member of their group over the wall. Being unemployed, limited funding from the Midnight Mayor’s office notwithstanding, is fairly incompatible with any establishment around here. Unless she suddenly becomes a millionaire, maybe. 

She glances back at Kelly Shiring, sat in a booth decorated by paperwork, her grapefruit and apple juice and organic salad looking almost embarrassed to be in the way. Sharon feels embarrassed too, but more about the enormous carton of chips she’ll be buying once she gets south enough of the river. 

Penny, on the other hand, takes time picking out a panini without a hint of vegetables and the largest slice of cake on display – not large at all, frankly – and pockets the receipt with relish. “Kickass apprentice,” she grins at Sharon, “got to be a perk or two for putting up with that twat.”

Sharon just smiles, hoping it’s not too nervous. Penny’s incredible self-confidence can have the unfortunate side effect of draining her own. Besides, there’s still this bit of her upbringing that doesn’t necessarily make her respect Matthew Swift – after all, she _has_ met him – but does mean she’s wary of attracting the wrath of either him or the mess in the universe which trails in his wake.

She settles for tea herself. The fact that it’s the cheapest thing on the menu is a definite strong point in its favour; so is the fact that it isn’t coffee. She still wakes up sometimes haunted by the scent of those endless beans.

Out of the blue, Penny announces, “There’s magic in cafés,” whilst they wait for the male barista to finish looking slightly panicked by the interruption to his endless coffee schedule.

“I’m not really surprised.” She isn’t even lying. “It’s starting to feel like there’s magic in everything, the way everybody talks about it.”

Penny grins, teeth white and vaguely terrifying somehow. “Catching on already?” She turns said smile on the poor man behind the counter, making him cower before he even realises he’s doing it. “But really, loads of repeated motions, focusing points of humanity – not much, but it’s a start.”

“Start of what?”

“See, I could tell you, but then I wouldn’t get to just smile knowingly and swan off, and I’ve been wanting to practice that. Matthew swears blind it happens naturally, but you know, best sorceress in London and all, wouldn’t want to give the wrong impression. Tried the mysterious thing clubbing the other night, almost tripped over the twat behind me. Don’t even think the guy could hear me either way, anyway. You ever have that problem?”

“Talking to guys?”

“Being appropriately mysterious. Shaman, right?”

Sharon hazards a glance at the people still queuing. However, like all Londoners, even if they are eavesdropping, they’re refusing to even look at them. “When it comes to me,” she admits, “I do apparently go more…shaman-y.”

“I know what you mean,” Penny nods. “I get that too. Only more, you know, awesome fireworks and concrete armour and summoning the death of cities and shit. Hell of a buzz, even if it’s not actually entirely you behind the wheel.”

On this, she does indeed swan off with a smile, and Sharon is suitably and obediently impressed. 

Kelly looks up at them both as they approach with her usual smile of apparently genuine delight at the world. As usual, Sharon has to fight the urge to take a step backwards. “So glad you both could make it,” she enthuses, moving appropriate papers out of the way for overpriced drinks and tucking away the receipt Penny holds out into one of the piles. “It’s so good to talk to people outside of the office.”

“Didn’t you kind of bring the office with you?” Penny asks sceptically, gesturing to an undeniably neat but still distinctly papered table.

“Technically I’m supposed to be at a working lunch – ”

“Hold it, sweetie,” says Penny, not a woman inclined towards using such terms of endearment in a cutesy manner, more as punctuation, “how can you be _at_ a working lunch? Isn’t the idea that you, you know, work? So you’re _at_ work?”

“Oh, no,” Kelly reassures her breezily, “we all go out to work!”

“You go _out_?” Penny points towards the window as she says this, as if unsure whether Kelly entirely intends her choice of words. Her incredulity has just the right trace of cynicism and building socialist rhetoric to give Sharon a distinctly Mayor-shaped sense of queasy déja-vu. “Just how much work usually gets done at these lunches, exactly?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Anyway,” Kelly continues, neatening the edges of one pile of papers as if Penny, Sharon, or the cowering barista were willing to pass judgement on someone using that many colours of highlighter, “if anybody at the office asks, here I am, talking to people relevant to my job, so still on a working lunch.”

Penny’s face does something interesting. “Is this one of these times you’re amazingly manipulative only nobody realises it because that’s just how manipulative you are?”

Kelly looks positively scandalised. “Oh, I hope not. I’m just doing my job.”

Sharon cuts in. “And what part of your job are you doing now? I’d like to know if something, you know, magical is going to jump out at us.”

“It’s just paperwork,” Kelly tells her, albeit in a voice which clearly indicates a person for whom there is nothing ‘just’ about paperwork. “I’m arranging, refining and prioritising items for the Mayor to action.”

“You get him to ‘ _action_ ’ things?” Penny has no need of visible air-quotes. She can draw them with her voice alone.

“I have a system worked out,” Kelly informs them. “He won’t read anything too long; anything too short and he thinks I’m patronising him.”

Sharon frowns. “You are, aren’t you?” 

“Oh, no!” Kelly’s eyes widen in what seems like genuine shock. “I’m assisting him in the most efficient and effective fulfilment of his mayoral duties!”

Penny looks vaguely horrified. “Did you just use ‘efficient’ _and_ ‘effective’ – wait, no, there was ‘duties’ as well, bloody hell – all that, in connection with _Matthew Swift_?”

“Who else would I be talking about?”

There’s something ever-so-slightly sinister about Kelly. No doubt Sammy the Elbow would have more than a few choice words for Sharon if he ever got to hear about it, but when she’s not trying to be shaman-y, Kelly seems almost like some sort of overly-helpful puppy, straight out of an ad (as opposed to real-life puppies, the evil shits who rely on their looks to get everything). And then Sharon looks at the city from the right angle, and she sees mad red eyes and remembers that yes, PA, but also yes, _Alderman._

Penny, impressed by face-to-face encounters with Kelly more than the reality beneath the skin, says, “I swear to God, you are my hero.”

Kelly blushes – there’s an actual honest-to-God red tinge to her cheeks. “I’m just doing my job,” she protests.

“Exactly, you herd fucking Matthew Swift into doing your bidding and half the time he doesn’t even realise it. Like I said: hero.”

Sharon takes a sip of her tea, wrinkles her nose slightly, and asks, “Where is he, anyway?” Her latest philosophy – not one unfamiliar to many Londoners – is that it is always best to know the current location of the Midnight Mayor, if only to know where all the trouble is.

Penny’s the first to answer. “On the prowl for arcane abominations.”

“Oh.” It sounds appropriate, certainly. Sharon couldn’t say exactly what the Midnight Mayor’s job description is, but she also suspects Matthew Swift can’t either. Comparing her own experience with the varied and alternately politely enthusiastic and affectionately sarcastic anecdotes of the other two, the image does grow of a man who, if danger doesn’t come to him, ventures out to poke it with a stick. In the name of civic duty, possibly.

Also possibly she is being far too kind. Then again, she allegedly has a tribe now, and there are several members who’d be more than happy to mutter dark accusations for her. Kelly would call this ‘outsourcing’. Sharon is silently terrified by the very prospect.

Cautiously, she asks – because as a shaman it’s her business to know, and she should check that she is in the know, because while she could just become one with the city and think as it thinks and see what it sees, there’s a lot to be said for just asking questions – she asks, “Any arcane abominations in particular?” It seems the sort of thing a tribe should be warned about. 

“Not that I know of,” Penny says, not nearly as reassuring as she presumably thinks. “Kelly?”

“There’s only the usual ominous portents, wandering pilgrims and mystical graffiti,” Kelly informs them breezily (Kelly’s default adverb seems to be ‘breezily’), “perfectly normal for the time of year.”

After all the time and effort and insults and taking on the soul of the city it took for people to accept her as a shaman, Sharon can’t help but feel that these two are seriously undermining her. “’The time of year’?” Her eyes drift inevitably to the simultaneously garish and weedy Christmas tree tucked apologetically into the corner of the café. “Christmas is something which – ” She hesitates, genuinely unsure of what she wants to say there. In the end her mouth gets impatient and does it for her. “ – matters?”

Penny looks a little stunned; Kelly more flustered. Sharon hopes it’s just the bluntness of the question.

Kelly visibly rallies first, but Penny is naturally the first to comment, very bluntly herself, “Normal people think this time’s magic, so frankly, we’re fucked.” 

“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” Kelly insists, “there’s only one or two festive additions. Scrooge, obviously – ”

“Obviously,” Sharon deadpans. She’d think they were joking, only this is the sort of thing where the truth is plenty absurd enough on its own. She gets a sudden, vivid image of a man in Victorian top hat and coat strolling down Regents Street or muttering darkly in Tesco’s. Then she thinks of Muppets, and the whole thing sort of unravels again.

“There are a few manifestations – the last-minute shopper on Oxford Street, always working on their list but never completing it, and the brass band you never see the rest of the year, but they don’t make much impact on the day-to-day management.”

“Matthew calls them hiccups,” Penny comments.

Automatically Sharon responds, “I bet he calls them something ruder.”

“Depends on the mood. He’s been a bit…funny lately.” Penny gains a frown which, on someone with thinner skin, might have shown concern. “Nothing to worry about – like Kelly said, not many big bads just because of the time of year. Not many big goods, either. A lot of the city doesn’t really care what time of year it is, really. Beggar King’ll have a new jumper off the back of a van or out of someone’s bin; Bag Lady might find some turkey. Some poor bastard is going to find the Little Matchstick Girl Christmas morning, same as every year.”

A shadow passes over Kelly’s face, just for a moment. Sharon is surprised it dared show itself at all. 

Penny doesn’t look so delighted herself. It makes the momentary silence even worse.   
When she carries on, she seems to have changed tracks deliberately. “Mind you, it can end up in the crapper a little easier than usual as well, maybe. All that optimism and all that cynicism and all those feet pounding along Oxford Street… What I’m trying to say is that all this stuff which is life, which is magic, that’s all currently crashing into solstices and lengthening shadows and proper old school shit, creating, and here I am directly quoting my bastard of a so-called teacher, ‘a pure bonafide once-a-year potential clusterfuck’.”

Sharon examines her tea. Its steam has an oddly sarcastic curl. “Well,” she tries, “once a year’s not so bad?”

“Yeah, because all the other times of the year have their own issues.” Penny glances up and her eyes widen. “Holy _shit_ ,” she whistles, drawing out every syllable but the meaning only all the clearer for it, “speak of the Devil.”

Sharon spins around – the best she can while sitting down, at least – and then frowns. “I don’t see Matthew anywhere.”

“Not _him_ ,” Penny says, as Kelly lets out her own gasp of surprise. Sharon still can’t see anything unusual: just the café of moody businessmen and huddled tourists, the Christmas lights blinking according to no pattern known to humankind, and at the front of the queue one businessman in particular apparently attempting to reduce the barista to tears with a speech regularly punctuated with ‘your people’.

Then Sharon remembers the part about how looks can be deceiving and a wendigo can pass for the head of a company and a bedraggled charity-shop-clad figure contains the blood of angels, and she lets herself slip into the shaman’s walk even while she sits still.

For once, it’s not Kelly’s mad red eyes and blackened skin or Penny’s city light inner glow that catches her attention, because suddenly in the centre of the café is a black hole, an unbelievable nothingness which sucks everything in, all around, crushing it down and swallowing it whole. Sharon feels a pulling on what she’s learning to call her soul, a chill growing across her skin. She hears, “I don’t see why I have to put up with this rubbish every Christmas,” and she _knows._

“The name’s only relatively recent,” Kelly says quietly. “We always knew what he was. We just had to wait for someone to name it.”

“Every time people turn up the lights and stoke the fire and sing against the growing darkness,” Penny murmurs, “every time we try to be happy and bold when the shadows grow longer and the things that want to kill us have even more of an advantage than usual, there’s always that fucker telling us it’s pointless. Saying it’s all stupid, that you can’t ignore reality, that you should just grow up and accept that we’re all going to die anyway. The one who doesn’t just walk past the beggars, but says that he won’t waste money on them; that it’s not just the _drug habits_ , not just that it’s the _way of the world_ , but a little here or there won’t be enough to help them so why waste the money?” 

Sharon’s surprised Penny doesn’t spit the words out on the floor. It might be the warning hand Kelly extends over the table, holding the brimming fury in place. “You can’t just punch him away.”

“Worth a try though.”

A terrified barista operating on automatic lets slip the phrase ‘holiday specials’, just the same question he asks everyone, has been told to ask everyone, and the café collectively cowers from the declaration, “I just want my bloody Americano! Why would I want any of these things?”

One brave soul pipes up behind him, “Hey, mate, lay off him! You don’t have to be such a bloody Scrooge!” 

The name hangs in the air.

The man who dared speak up then apparently can’t help but cower when Scrooge turns to eye him imperiously and demand, “You tell me, why should I pander to this childish insanity? Why should I play along that there’s a point to any of this?” Scrooge eyes him closer and questions, in a low hiss, “Do you think that come January you will be glad you wasted all your money? When the rent comes due, will you think ‘at least we had a tiny overpriced tree’? When she leaves you, will you be glad you bought her such an expensive tacky necklace? Will your boss accept your excuses; will your landlord? Do you truly think any of this makes any difference?”

The man turns pale; more than that, Sharon can see something wavering at the edges of him, something light which begins to stream away, swirling into the void at Scrooge’s centre. She can see him becoming _less_ , while Scrooge only becomes _more_ , eating at whatever defence humanity could possibly have against the hard facts.

Next to her, Penny hisses, “That fucking does it,” and before Kelly can grab at her the sorceress is on her feet, stomping over to confront Scrooge herself. Sharon follows, not invisible but such a part of the café that nobody would see any point in looking at her. Kelly hesitates, but a glance back shows her nails beginning to grow longer, sharper, the nervousness in her expression rather undermined by the fire kindling in her eyes.

The coffee machine lets out a faint hiss as Penny’s hands grow hot with the heat of the place, of the people gathering here every day, every year, the same patterns of coming together and talking out of the cold. When she grabs Scrooge’s arm, his perfect suit – clearly bought to last, not fashionable but endurable – smokes slightly. “Listen,” she says, “I don’t care whatever fancy role you think you have in the universe: Fuck. Right. Off.”

Sharon pauses in her walk, feeling her oneness with the city waver a little as she wonders whether she prefers Matthew’s grand but rather over-the-top speeches. At least they seem a little more fitting, at times like this.

Then again, when Penny spoke those less impressive words, she spoke with the voice of several centuries of people clustered together to talk and scheme and plot and discuss and argue, so it did sound better in practice.

Unfortunately, Scrooge is not so impressed. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Did I hurt your feelings? Does hearing the truth hurt?”

Penny opens her mouth to answer, but suddenly Kelly is at her elbow, whispering fervently, “You can’t reason with him. That’s the whole point.” If Sharon didn’t already think she was some sort of superhuman (beyond turning into a dragon, obviously), she does now, as Penny visibly shakes with rage but does at least close her mouth.

Right up until Scrooge smiles the upper-class smile bestowed upon all commoners and bestowed by man upon all silly women learning their place, and Penny hauls off and punches him right in the face.

Scrooge wipes the blood from the corner of his mouth and asks, “What did you expect that to do, little girl?”

“Makes me feel better.” Penny is nothing if not honest. 

However, when she tries again, Scrooge catches her fist; grips it as he begins to force her to her knees. Kelly he fixes with the gaze of a thousand cynics drawing the curtains and refusing to turn up the heating even for themselves, saving and saving for a future which never comes until they’re pinching the pennies of their very souls, and he states, “When you die, nobody will remember you were here.”

Penny is pushing back with all of the laughter of the souls who have passed time here, drawing on the relentless energy out on the streets, but Scrooge is draining it all away. Less like fighting fire with fire; more like fighting fire with oxygen. Kelly doesn’t move, looks horrified, looks for just a second like she doesn’t know what to do. It isn’t a good look for her at all.

Which is when Sharon reaches out, takes hold of the warmth sucked out of the man still standing there dumbstruck by this scene, and yanks it out of the abyss.

Scrooge spins around in stunned fury, and Kelly takes a swipe with her claws, leaving little damage on flesh but plenty on the suit’s jacket. From the appalled tinge his anger takes on, that’s just as bad. “Do you have any idea how much this costs?” he screeches.

Kelly meets his gaze again, and this time does not hesitate. “If you send us a receipt, we’ll see what we can do about reimbursing you.”

Scrooge stares at her, possibly aghast, possibly confused, and Sharon yanks again at the shreds of souls still not entirely consumed, snaps the threads wound around Penny, and Penny sticks to what she knows and lashes out at somewhere rather lower than his face.

Doubled up, panting, staggering drunkenly as if being dragged back by invisible ropes, Scrooge spits out, “You fucking _bitches_.”

Penny grins. “I’ve always thought there’s a bit of a coward about people like you. Now run away, _little boy_.”

Personally Sharon doesn’t think that makes a whole lot of sense. It hardly matters to the world as a whole though; Penny could probably have said anything and Scrooge would still have snarled and left, straightening up and shoving confused bystanders away from the door.

Without any other focus, said bystanders home in on the two women now returning to more normal appearances. When a third appears out of nowhere, there’s a general conclusion that that’s impossible, she was always there, what the hell are you talking about?

Kelly comments, shocked, “That was very violent.”

“Not nearly violent enough,” Penny growls.

Both views merge into the background as Sharon stands in an odd mental haze. It feels a little like a bit of herself got sucked in, just for a moment, and has been left floating on the breeze. She thinks of the souls still caught in the void, and feels ill. She doesn’t so much let herself collapse to the ground as give in to whatever gravity wants. As Scrooge left, she’d tried to grab hold, and she just couldn’t.

“’When you gaze into the abyss’,” a voice says close by, “’the abyss gazes also into you’.” She looks up to see Kelly offering a chocolate muffin and a smile. 

“Where did you get that?” Sharon croaks.

“Nietzsche. Unless you meant the muffin, in which case, Carlos, who is very grateful but not entirely sure how to thank us because he’s not entirely sure what we did.” Kelly gestures towards the barista, who grins and then looks terrified and ducks out of sight.

Near the back of what was once a queue (and no doubt will be again, very soon), a newcomer demands, “Here, are you serving anyone or not?” And thus some semblance of a London normality reasserts itself.

The muffin is vaguely disappointing, like all such muffins from all such cafés, relying purely on superficial appearance to lure the purchaser into its grasp. It is also vaguely free, though, so Sharon finds it hard to care. Their booth is still there – people seem to be avoiding it as strenuously as possible – so she just sits and munches away whilst Kelly spins some sort of cover story which nobody thinks is real but everybody fervently believes.

A few minutes later, she hears Penny exclaim, “And where the hell were you, eh? Some Midnight Mayor you are!”

Looking up in surprise and just a dash of fear – not of the man, a little of the entity, and a lot of what might be just behind him – she sees Matthew Swift, resplendent in charity shop Christmas jumper and a distinctly nonplussed expression. “What happened?”

“Scrooge,” Penny informs him cheerily, “nothing your kickass apprentice couldn’t handle, obviously, but for some sort of magical community caretaker you ain’t half shit at it sometimes.”

Matthew shapes several questions – Sharon thinks she recognises the start of ‘what do you mean’ and ‘how did you’ and ‘why’ – before something with a distinctly whiny edge dodges around all its competitors: “You mean I missed it?”

For once Penny doesn’t respond. She looks like she’s trying too hard not to laugh.

Matthew shifts irritably on the spot. “Shut up. I mean, this is our job! This is the only bit of our job I like! I am the bloody Midnight Mayor, I walk the walls of the city and speak with its spirits; we are the blue electric angels, we be light, we be life, we be blue electric flame; I turned back the Death of Cities and Blackout and _this is what we do._ ”

Penny’s mouth twists as the laugh becomes that bit harder to contain. Sharon has this sudden urge to go pat him on the head, he looks so much like an indignant cat. Meanwhile, Kelly hooks her arm through his and reassures him, with a beaming grin, “There’s still so much you can do, though! It is good that you’re here, Mr Mayor. I have a few things I need you to sign off on – reparations, for one, and your official statement – ”

“How do I already have an official statement? I don’t even know what happened!”

“I was just drafting it, now if you’ll just read it through…”

“I wasn’t here!”

“But you still have to make a statement.” Kelly’s voice has taken on this gentle guiding edge, like a teacher explaining the world to a resentful pupil. Matthew’s distinct pout doesn’t help. “In fact, Mr Mayor, there’s one or two other things…”

Quickly Kelly comes over to gather up all her papers – quickly but neatly, the epitome of efficiency, assembling them all side by side inside the briefcase produced from under the table and snapped shut with smooth motions. Behind her, Matthew clearly considers running, but Penny is one step ahead of him, planting herself between him and the door to berate him in the same breath as demanding answers, like why the hell she can’t just have coffee for two minutes without some mystical entity showing up, it’s your city, and speaking of, I should totally get paid for this, right…

Avoiding her eyes, Matthew looks over and catches Sharon’s instead. She smiles weakly and manages a wave, figuring it’s better to at least try to establish yourself as the nice one who just happens to stumble into these things. For a moment it looks like he’s trying to be suspicious, only instead he comes off more like he’s seeking out someone to look pleadingly at. In answer, she can only offer a shrug and a vaguely sympathetic smile. Secretly she thinks that the more time Penny and Kelly spend teaching him to act like a remotely normal human and not an arrogant bastard who considers himself the saviour of all London, the better.

When Kelly reclaims him and guides him gently but no doubt very firmly out of the café in her wake, Penny stalks over and says, “Fuck this. I need a drink.” Sharon couldn’t agree more.

She’s still smiling at some piece of commentary on their latest encounter, still putting on her coat, when she looks out of the window in time to see Matthew’s expression of mounting horror as Kelly produces reams of paper from a briefcase technically only big enough for a few files and perhaps the kind of lunch which contains an apple. To be fair, that doesn’t have to be magical: it could just be Kelly. There’s a special kind of magic to PAs, Sharon’d stake her life on it. (Possible not her life: she’s come to close to losing it, she properly appreciates what it means now. Maybe just her next paycheque. That seems far enough into the future to be safe.)

For a moment she thinks she sees a shape looking in at the warm café: a child, maybe a girl, in a leather jacket far too big for her, ragged fingerless gloves and a threadbare hat for some football team. The colours aren’t clear, nor is her face. There’s a vague sense that she’s holding something, with the shape of a newspaper, or ornamental candles, or glinting keyrings of Big Ben and Tower Bridge and the London Eye, or they might be lighters, cheap lighters with cannabis leaves or union jacks crudely painted on. 

The trouble is that Sharon gets the feeling she’s already looking too long – _seeing_ too long. She closes her eyes, just for a second, and the girl is gone. Sharon can just about remember the shape of her, and even that leaves an itch at what any of her books might have described as her ‘inner shaman soul’. Far stronger is the lingering thought of ‘just look away’ and ‘I can’t help her’.

Mildly disturbed – technically an improvement on some days – she raises her gaze to see Matthew has halted in his attempt at drifting away as if his slow retreat will in any way deter the cosmic force of Kelly. He’s nodding, clearly not listening, and his eyes are fixed on the point where Sharon might have seen a little girl selling lighters.

Sharon isn’t used to Matthew Swift being anything other than an arrogant git, so it isn’t until he’s given in and let Kelly guide him down the road in the general direction of Aldermansbury Square that she can begin to place the expression of twisted longing and loss and _guilt._

“Hey,” she hears, and a rough prod reminds her of the other sorcerer present. “Shaman lady, come on. We just took on Scrooge, which might not sound all that impressive, but still, drinks. Drinks are going to happen. Somewhere a beer is calling my name. Not quite sure where, though; definitely couldn’t say which one. Better try them all, just to be on the safe side.”

She saw it too; Sharon _knows_ she saw. But instead she just nods. “I was thinking of a bartending job, actually. Hours might work better, and it’d drive my mum crazy.”

“Christ, you have to go for it, in that case,” Penny tells her. “Come on, we’ll pick you out a nice one. No point working somewhere there’s no decent eye candy, right?”

It’s bitterly cold outside, London at least trying for the temperature if not the look of the season. These days Sharon actually hopes it won’t snow: it’s not worth the half an hour of prettiness when you hit the week of chaos as the city buckles under the pressure of something so alien seeping into its cracks and breaking them open. She especially doesn’t want to see it all happen as a shaman. She already knows – of course she knows, _shaman_ – that if she tries to do the walk on icy pavement, she’ll fall flat on her face _somehow_ , the same way she knows that Sammy will know too and she refuses to give him the satisfaction.

A faint rush of warmth fills her; she looks up from eyeing the pavement apprehensively to see Penny grinning as she pulls the last of the café’s heat back inside herself. “No point in freezing your tits off when you’re with a fucking sorceress, am I right?”

Sharon couldn’t agree more.

**Author's Note:**

> There is a whole separate fic about Matthew Swift's search for the Little Lighter Girl. I might write it if I ever feel like crying myself to sleep.


End file.
